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Urban Terrors

Urban Terrors: New British Horror Cinema 1997-2008 by MJ Simpson

The definitive guide to the 21st Century British Horror Revival

Foreword by Sean Pertwee Hemlock BooksPublication date: 1 December 2012 288 pages, approx. 300 photos £17.95By the late 1990s, the Golden Age of British Horror Cinema was long gone. But like all the best monsters, the genre has risen from the grave and in the 21st century is going from strength to strength.

Developments in video technology and changes in distribution have seen a ten-fold increase in the number of British horror films made and released each year. From major studio pictures like 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead to cult indies like Freak Out and The Last Horror Movie, the new millennium is a boom time for home-grown horror. And many of these new films are contemporary, socially-relevant tales reflecting life in modern Britain; instead of creepy castles, their monsters and psychos stalk housing estates and tower blocks...

Urban Terrors: New British Horror Cinema is the first book to fully examine the British horror film revival, documenting and analysing 114 movies which were commercially released between 1997 and 2008. It reveals how changes in technology have enabled more people to make films, how changes in distribution – from VHS to DVD to VOD – are enabling more people to watch them, and how the mainstream media has failed to spot and comment upon this phenomenon. And it examines how these new kinds of horror films have dealt with issues like disenfranchised youth, class division and social exclusion...

Nominated for 'Book of the Year' in the annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards

"What emerges is an illuminating account of contemporary Britain, a country reinventing its terrors of old to reflect and reinvent hell for the next generation. It's a read as original, provocative, perverse and diverse as the culture that spawned it - a bloody good show." - Ashley Thorpe, Fangoria

"Respected film journo MJ Simpson does a fine job of chronicling the dawn of a new age of cheapie creepy home grown horror fuelled by the easy availability of digital technology. In fact I'm pretty awestruck by what he has done here ... Urban Terrors gets a big thumbs up from me." Allan Bryce, The Dark Side

"He seems to have sat through a staggering amount of punishingly bad films so that we, the readers, don't have to. But along the way he has stumbled across a significant number of excellent films, too, many of which have escaped either critical or commercial attention. ... If you are interested in the horror genre, or want to find out just how active dozens of British filmmaker are, this is a great read." Adrian Smith, Cinema Retro - full review

"the wealth of information and the namechecking of some overlooked gems makes it well worth a read." Martin Unsworth, Starburst - full review

Hi - I just found your site and wondered why you didn't get a professional book indexer to make a full index for your book. It would have contained a lot more than just titles and names and would definitely have enhanced the experience for the readers. I'm an indexer and would be happy to quote for any future books you produce.

Thanks for the offer but I didn't get a professional indexer because (a) there was no money to pay one, (b) there was no room in the book for an index, and (c) in a book of this sort there is literally no need to index anything except names and titles.

Love your book which is absolutely essential as a record of what's been going on and with suitable piss takes too. Tho I would suggest that most of the films, despite the volume, are a tad... lacking?

But as I said, your book is brilliant - one of the best genre books - and I'd like to feature it on Horrorpedia.com. Can you send some press as it's not getting the Google I need? Adrian, horrorpedia.com

Thank you very much for your kind comments, Sheerblogger. In terms of the quality of the films featured, I consider about a third of them to be excellent, about a third to be diabolical and about a third to be middling.

About this blog

My original site was launched in January 2002, transferring to Blogger eleven years later. In 2016, when I finally completed the transfer of my old content, the site had grown to 1,000+ reviews and interviews totaling more than one and a half million words. I hope you find something of interest.

About Me

I co-founded SFX in 1995 and worked there for three years then spent 15 years as a freelance film journalist writing for Fangoria, Video Watchdog, Shivers and other mags. I now concentrate on books and scripts.

Contact/Follow Me

If you want to be alerted to newly posted reviews and interviews by Twitter, you can follow @mjsimpsonfilms. However, please do not use Twitter to contact me - use good, old-fashioned e-mail: mjs2000@ntlworld.com